


if it makes you happy

by zauberer_sirin



Series: if it makes you happy, it can't be that bad [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Making Out, Marriage, POV Phil Coulson, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, i'm not kidding about the fluff, in which they defeat HYDRA because i want the babes to be happy about something, makeouts in Lola are always a great idea, marrieds!, seriously so much fluff, yes I wrote Marriage fic deal with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-20 00:31:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1490101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Some days even Coulson thinks this is ludicrous.</i> </p><p>Skye and Coulson talk about the Thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if it makes you happy

**Author's Note:**

> So here's the deal: I never thought I'd write marriage!fic either, but I figured that if every other pairing gets to have tons of marriage stories it's only fair that Coulson/Skye does, too. So yeah. I wrote marriage!fic, deal with it. Also, I think Coulson and Skye would be hilarious as marrieds. In fact I don't dislike how this fic turned out. No apologies.
> 
> Sequel to [drank til i was thirsty again](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1475071) and last in the series.

  


  


One might think that, after all this time, she'd give up her habit of walking out of places and disappearing into corners with her ability for _not being found_.

One might think, after all this time, she'd have given up a lot of things she hasn't.

It's not a completely bad thing, Coulson thinks, but then you might rightfully accuse him of being the sentimental one here.

"Look out," another new agent calls out as she loads another crate into the plane.

He wonders what's in it. Hectic days mean he's learned to delegate. He doesn't like losing control but – he's been reassured over and over this is not losing control.

This is progress.

They are all about progress these days. In more ways than one.

Something has been bothering him all morning, and Coulson wants to know what it is. Maybe if he can find Skye he'll now. But Skye is supposed to be working – except the comms room is empty and the young recruits are scattered around the second floor, doing their morning chores and trying not to get in the way of FitzSimmons.

He checks in with May, seeing if Skye has switched to another task, because he knows she sometimes helps May go over the safety measures of the electrics in the mornings. Seeing as they haven't been able to afford new equipment for the last couple of years she and May have become some sort of safety maniacs, Coulson is pretty sure they are actually cannibalizing the Bus, bit by bit, their own version of a _Flight of the Phoenix_ scenario.

"I heard her go downstairs a while ago," May informs him, and he appreciates the lack of eye-rolling, he appreciates it very much. In fact she hasn't rolled her eyes at him all week, not even once, which Coulson counts as May's own way of saying _congratulations_. He is a bit touched by the gesture.

He finds Skye in Lola's passenger seat, no wonder he couldn't see her before, she's practically hiding inside the shape of her own body, pressed against the door, knees to her chest (he's told her a hundred times, not to put her feet on the seats, but she keeps treating this car like it's a second room; at least she shares cleaning and maintenance responsibilities with him, fifty-fifty), looking distracted. So this is where she was – it was here or the SUV or hiding from pestering recruits in Coulson's office. He places his hands on the other side of the car.

"What are you doing out here? I thought you had a presentation."

Skye looks up. He sees her face and figures out what's been bothering him all morning.

"Pushed it a couple of hours," she explains. "I needed a breather. Been showing the new recruits the virtual ropes all morning."

"That's what you get for being so good at your job. For being– "

"A pillar of the reconstruction, yes, yes," she waves him away, shoulders tense and lips curled up, obviously proud but perpetually mortified by compliments. Still that girl sometimes. "I got the memo. I _wrote_ the memo. Well, technically Simmons helped me go over the grammar and stuff but I wrote the memo."

He smiles at her familiar gesture of weariness. He gets in the car, the well-worn, comforting shape of it always lifting his mood a bit.

"You are cranky," he points out.

"Well, yeah, I am. But not with you." She smiles a bit. "In fact it's part of the problem, I haven't seen you all day and it's making me cranky."

"Oh?" He can't help certain pleased edge to his voice.

"Relax, I'm not getting all codependent on you. But it's been a week and... I don't know. I thought we'd have more time for us, in general."

"We knew it was going to be this hectic."

"Yes, no, I'm not complaining, I'd be crazy to. It's just..."

"We'll find time."

He realizes he doesn't sound that convinced. Between the plane used as temporary headquarters for the As Of Yet Unnamed Organization Colloquially Known As New Shield, meaning it's overgrown with personnel coming and going, equipment being moved and taken out, and their respective all-consuming duties as As Of Yet Unnamed Rank But Colloquially Known As Director Coulson and As Of Yet Unnamed Rank But Colloquially Known As _Probably?_ Vice Director Skye, it's true they have been busier than they'd expected. Perhaps it hadn't been the best time to do this, but then again what does a _best time_ even look like, feel like, with them? They don't have good or perfect times to do things, they just have _this time_.

And well, she does look like she needs a breather. People assume victory is relaxed but victory is just as much work as war, or even more, at least more continuous, more gruelling. Less adrenaline to keep you awake. And war is never over, even if this particular one is.

Skye looks on edge. Her face is changing; she still looks ridiculously, irremediably young to him, but she's lost some of the childish roundness of her cheeks, her features sharper these days – in the right light she still looks like a criminal.

"What were you doing out here?" he asks.

She waves her ID at him. "Nothing. I was looking at my driver's license. I just realized I have to go get a new one now, with the change of name and all that."

"You don't sound pleased."

"Well, it took me so much effort to get this damn thing."

"I remember. I was there."

"Yes, yes, you were." She leans over, propped on her knees, and gives him a quick, appreciative kiss, grabbing his collar for a moment, remembering those days. "It seems like only a while ago. Maybe we're moving too fast with this, Agent, think about that."

She's going to tease him forever about this, isn't she? Which Coulson can't really understand, because it's not like the decision was his alone. Apparently he should be embarrassed, but not her. Well, he isn't even the one who asked first, she always seems to forget that piece of information – that she was the one who brought it up, even if it was in a sideways fashion. Next time she teases him he's going to remind her, she was the one who asked.

"You should have thought about that last week," he says and this time it's him who leans over to kiss her. He looks around first, a weird, stuck-up habit, considering this has been going on forever and everybody knows and nobody cares (well, he thinks Fitz might still be holding a slight grudge) but at the end of the day Coulson is exactly that same person. Skye still calls him _Coulson_ in front of the team and the other agents (except in moments of danger or when she's really pissed at him), and that's entirely for his benefit, not hers. In any case it's a good thing there's no one around to see them like this right now: they must look inbearable to everyone else. Not that they can exactly be blamed, it's only been a week and he and Skye might be unconventional but... From time to time they too feel like honoring the spirit of the gesture.

"Why do I have to take your name though?" she wonders out loud. "That's so backwards, we're not in the 1950s."

"You don't have to," Coulson tells her. "I'd gladly take your name – but you don't have a surname. Your whole name is an internet handle."

She tilts her head towards his side. "Fine, I see your point. You don't want to be Mr Phil _Blank_."

"What's wrong with taking my name? You don't like _Coulson_?"

She smirks, sliding down in her seat and draping one leg over his knee.

"Oh I like Coulson very much."

He sighs. She's so insufferable. He likes that so much.

They've been together two years and things are just about as settled as when they had been together two months. Different, definitely, but not more predictable, or explainable. It's a lot of work, but then again, everything else is. They don't have easy lives, no one would expect them to have easy love lives either. It isn't a fully-formed thing yet. They are still building it. He knows everything about her, even the corners she used to leave in the dark, and she knows things about him Coulson didn't think he'd ever tell anyone. He likes being naked in front of her because he wants her to _see him_. She still grabs at her old self-defense mechanisms and tries to run but now she's got him to call her on that. They figure it out.

When, months ago, they sat down on their bed and quietly they talked about getting married it didn't feel like anything definitive at all, quite the opposite, it had felt like one more thing they'd do together, still building it, one more choice they made together, something incremental rather than life-altering.

He doesn't think there could ever be anything definitive with her. Except, of course, for the one thing that is.

"I did it for the villains, you know," Skye says. "Marrying you."

" _For the villains_? Please explain."

She straightens in her seat (withdrawing that leg he was beginning to really appreciate as it rested over his own) like she's been waiting for a chance to do exactly that, explain.

"Yeah, so the villains would know we are, you know, _a Thing_ , and when we come to kick their asses they'll be all like _Here come The Coulsons, we'd better run in the opposite direction_. It's gonna be sweet. We're going to be so badass."

Coulson frowns. "I can't believe I married someone who says _badass_ without irony."

"Well, I can't believe I married someone who says _without irony_ instead of _non-ironically_."

"Fair enough."

"That was pretty impulsive of us, though," she points out. He wonders if she really is having some reservations. But she kind of smiles at the thought and Coulson catches it.

"I don't know," he says. "We are not exactly new recruits."

Her expressions grows serious.

"But – I mean. I guess I'm sorry you don't have a super romantic proposal story to tell. I know you're old-fashioned."

Two years later and she still worries, from time to time, that she is not the kind of person he had wanted to end up with.

He shakes his head. "I'm not old-fashioned about this. Plus I think it's pretty romantic, just sitting down to talk, the two of us, and just deciding we wanted to do it, together, as _partners_."

The word makes her grin; he knows it soothes him whenever he thinks about it. _Partners_ means they are not alone. _Partners_ means they are in this together. _Partners_ means they will fight the good fight to the end, shoulder to shoulder, side by side. 

"Deciding we wanted to do it once HYDRA had been defeated," she adds.

"Yes, you can't leave HYDRA out of the story, that's the romantic part."

She smiles warmly. "I'm glad it only took a few months to see that through, though. If I were worse at my job I could have stayed a spinster forever. The nuns at St Agnes said that's how I was going to end up. They said that a lot, actually."

Coulson has a pretty good idea what the nuns at St Agnes would have made of this if they knew, of Skye appearing with a fifty-two year old guy in tow. He doesn't like thinking about that. It's almost worth it neither of them having families who could frown upon the whole thing. Some days even Coulson thinks it's ludicrous. Some _days_ – come the night though and Skye is there with him in their shared bed, and he still gets the same old nightmares from time to time (he still gets the feeling all his time is borrowed time, his second life a loan) and so does she, but then he wakes up to her warm arm around his waist or her hair tickling the back of his neck and it's not so ludicrous anymore. It's not ludicrous at all.

(he once _tried_ talking about it with her, in all seriousness, the age thing: he pointed out the very real possibility that he'd die much, much sooner than her and Skye simply shrugged and said "If I'm going to lose you, I'll lose you, it will happen anyway – but I'd rather _have you_ , first" and Coulson couldn't find any fault in that logic, nor in the sharp bite of happiness upon hearing she wanted to have him)

"All in all, if they could see me now, those nuns," Skye is saying. "A civil servant with a nice collection of vintage spycam watches. I haven't done too bad for myself. Uh? _Mrs A.C._ "

He chuckles. Where is the morning's tension now?

"I hadn't heard that one in a long time."

"Miss it?" she asks.

"No. I like what you call me now."

"Dummy?" she nudges him on the leg with her foot.

He groans. "Skye."

" _Husband_?" she tries, he thinks for the first time. " _Wow_. That's so weird. I'm never saying that again."

He laughs.

This is not how he imagined his life turning out. Not _at all_.

Of course since he was young he had wanted to marry, to _be married_ , he is exactly that kind of guy and Skye was not wrong about old-fashioned. But he never thought he'd marry someone twenty-five years his junior, for starters. Even more than that, he never imagine himself marrying someone like Skye. But at some point in the last couple of years he realized Skye had already become his family, his only family.

(and he is hers and Coulson doesn't need to guess just how important that is to someone like Skye)

Fifteen days ago the last HYDRA stronghold fell to a combined attack of old-SHIELD, new-SHIELD, CIA and apparently some of Captain America's closest friends.

Thirteen days ago they filed for the license.

They had no idea these things moved so fast, red tape-wise.

So seven days ago – 

Yes, Skye is his family now, even officially – not that that bit matters.

"Are you regretting it?" He asks. He notices her expression. "Not that, not us. All this."

He gestures towards the utter chaos in the lab, the people stomping up and down the stairs, the flickering red light from the comm lines always on, day or night. Victory, reconstruction, renewal. Nothing ever stops, you just wake up and ready yourself for the new fight.

"No, no," she replies. "It's a lot of work but... we couldn't keep up the cowboy routine of the past couple of years. We had to get organized. People together... we need the accountability."

 _Accountability_. That has always been her idea, and his too: having someone to have your back means that they can stop you if you happen to stray from the right path. And Coulson is the highest ranking surviving member of SHIELD (officially; he knows Fury is out there somehow, fighting his own battles, whatever they are) so if someone could make a call and be heard it had to be him. Next thing he knows (and he kind of blames Skye in the first place, but also Simmons who backed her so wholeheartedly) there's talk of opening a new Academy. Coulson doesn't know exactly how he's ended up here: all his life he was a man who just wanted to follow orders, not lead. But that man is dead. That man died, and then he met Skye. He knows _exactly_ how he's ended up here, at this precise spot, with these responsibilities and these hopes.

"Still. We should make some time for us," she tells him, in all seriousness. 

She's right. Today (his strangely broody mood) has proved it. There's no point in saving the world if they don't get to come back to each other and _this_.

"I'll clear up the schedule, soon, I promise," he tells her. "We can drive off and disappear for a while. What do you think?"

"Sounds good. Me and you. And Lola."

"Of course."

"After all, this is where you kissed me for the first time," Skye comments.

He looks away, pretending he has to think about it. "Oh, that's right, I didn't –"

"Yeah, don't act like you don't remember, pal."

"Okay."

"Not that I don't enjoy seeing you try to play it cool."

He straightens up, trying to seem as stern as he can.

"You know, forgetting for a moment the fact that I am your boss and deserve your respect –"

"So much respect. Also you're just As Of Yet Unnamed Official Position But Colloquially Known As My Boss, remember."

"Leaving that aside... There was a time when you thought I _was_ cool."

"Yeah, and then you made the mistake of letting me get in your pants." She slides one leg along his lap suggestively. Insufferable.

"I think we are still within the timeframe for an annulment," he says.

She moves her whole body into his space again, drawing a long, teasing kiss out of him. "You're not going anywhere," she tells him.

"No," he agrees, sighing against her mouth.

She pulls away, too soon, the kiss too light, Coulson wants – he just _wants_.

"Ugh, do I really have to do the presentation?" she whines, shoulders sunk.

"That's the price of being good at your job."

"No good deed, uh?"

"Hey, I have to talk to the money men in an hour, _grovel_ for funds for the new bulletproof vest prototype FitzSimmons came up with. Wanna trade places?"

He's not even going to talk about how their coffee machine is busted and it was kind of Skye's fault and he doesn't like to use Fitz's infernal caffeine contraption in the lab (he doesn't care about purity and water filtration, he just wants _an expresso_ ). He remembers Tony Stark has about five Jura IMPRESSA machines lying, untouched, around his kitchen and he suddenly feels very old and irrelevant. He can see how his chat with the money men is not going to go well at all.

"Oh, no, give me the rookies," Skye agrees, although truth be told, given her con artists instincts Coulson should probably have put her to the task, they'd be fully-funded by now. "You get to be the bureaucrat, it suits you well."

She touches her palm to the side of his chest, patting the lapel of his dark suit, like she's making a point. Coulson grabs her wrist between thumb and index and pulls her to his side. Then he's kissing her, a stubborn hand clenched into the fabric of her denim jacket, then unclenching to splay his fingers into the curve of her hip. She lets him draw circles on the roof of her mouth and loose strands of her hair fall against his chin. It's nice and then it's something else.

He deepens the kiss, suddenly possessed by something he can't name. He licks at her, breathing hard against her mouth. Some days it's like he knows that mouth as well as his own. Other days it's like it's the first time he's tasting this, the tender muscle moving into him. Today it's both.

Eventually he pulls away and she lets him, and he is a bit dizzy with the intensity, not because it's not familiar (he keeps waiting for this to lose its edge, he has learned it should, but it never does) but because he wasn't planning on it at this particular moment. She should be working. He should be overseeing something, probably. They want to be thought of as very professional

Skye's face is almost flushed, stunned, but then a joyful grin starts spreading across its lines.

"Wow. Where did that come from?" she asks. "Not that I'm complaining, I'm totally on board with whatever this is."

"I haven't seen you all morning," he says, a simple, true, truly pathetic explanation.

"Who's getting codependent now?" she teases him. _Don't tease me_ , he thinks, a bit desperatedly, _please don't tease me I'm in love with you it's a revelation every damn time don't tease me I don't know what to do_.

"It's not that. It's just that," and he might as well tell her, she is, after all, his partner. "My day goes better when I see you."

Skye gives him an amused look. She doesn't have to say it, Coulson can tell, something smug, along the lines of _oh well then it's a good thing you let me marry you_. Then it's okay, her expression soft as he's ever seen, and he knows she feels it too and he knows she would never hold it against him – he always knew that about her, even before they started this, he always felt safe in the knowledge that she'd never use what Coulson feels for her against him.

He's always felt safe around her, period.

She slides across the car and sits on his lap. It's incredibly uncomfortable, and a bit ridiculous-looking, except that Skye starts kissing him fast and hungry and Coulson forgets about uncomfortable and ridiculous, forgets about almost everything but the sensation of her tongue pushing, pushing, pushing against his, running across the roof of his mouth and his teeth, and the familiar weight of her in his arms, her thighs on his knees. It's pathetic (and that's another word he forgets about as soon as it comes up) how quickly and easily Skye can unlock those moaning noises from the back of his throat.

"It's okay," she says in his ear, low and intimate and precise, "I've missed you too, husband."

They both make a horrified face at each other.

"No, that's too weird," Coulson says, "don't ever call me that again."

He feels her laugher before he even hears it. "You got it, boss."

This time she doesn't go back to the passenger seat. She stays here. She _stays_. She doesn't let go off him, either.

There are people passing by around them now; movers with equipment to be delivered to the lab. Somebody throws them a curious look, from time to time. Fuck if Coulson cares about that.

"I'm not cranky anymore," Skye declares, arms around his neck. "Also..."

"Yes?"

"Of course I still think you are cool. The _coolest_."

Coulson never imagined his life turning out like this.

He'd be a fool not to welcome the change of plans.

He'd be lying if he said it wasn't working.

It's working. 

It _keeps_ working. It might not sound like much, that. But he's learning to see the world in a different way these days. It keeps working and it is a lot of work and that's the part that makes the story romantic, he thinks. He is sure Skye would agree, she probably knows this better than him and knew it earlier than him, like so many other things – she is, after all, the one who asked first.


End file.
